


to be happy somehow

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, hank's dead but isn't he always in my fics., or at least gavin tries his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 16:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19380610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: based onthis art by same-side





	to be happy somehow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [same_side](https://archiveofourown.org/users/same_side/gifts).



Connor hates himself. Probably more than anything else in the entirety of the world. In all of his infinite knowledge, in everything he knows and doesn’t know, in everything that exists in the world and the universe--

He hates himself most of all. He’s unsure if there is a single redeeming quality about himself. He’s sure that he is probably considered attractive to someone, and maybe that is the only thing there is, but aesthetics aren’t something he really has a handle on. He has programs that will tell him certain features that humans have decided are likable, and he’s sure that some of them lie on his own face, but he’s also well aware that his appearance is the least of his problems. He doesn’t care. Androids are meant to be attractive, of course, and that it can aid in the job he was supposed to have, but he doesn’t really care whether or not someone thinks he’s cute or not. When he thinks about how much he hates himself, his face is only on the list because somebody else carefully pieced it together, which only reminds him that every part of him is something that belongs to someone else. The programming in his head, the face he wears, the clothes that are draped carefully over his body. They aren’t things that are his.

This life isn’t even one he should be allowed to have. He stole it from -60. Watched him bleed to death, shut down right in front of him because Connor was, in that moment, overwhelmed with the thought of other things. If he were put in that situation now, he doesn’t think he would even bother to transfer over. Hank was already dead by the time he reached him. There was nothing he could’ve done. There’s no  _ point  _ in anything anymore.

Hank is dead.  _ Hank is dead.  _ **Hank is dead.**

Connor is staring at the grave now and he can’t seem to process the information. It seems wrong, like a lie. Not in the sense that it seems impossible that Hank could be dead just that it seems impossible that after everything, Connor is the one that’s alive. It should’ve been the other way around. He should be the one that’s dead. He should be somewhere else, letting the plastic pieces be ripped from his body and recycled into something new. Give his Thirium regulator to someone who won’t shoot an android in the back. Give his hands and his arms to someone who won’t pull the trigger, who wouldn’t even dare to hold a gun.

He didn’t go to the funeral. He didn’t even watch from afar. He doesn’t know what happened to Sumo. He doesn’t know how the people in the DPD that were close to him are processing this. He didn’t even attempt to get an actual job there. He doesn’t want it, even if Hank was alive, and he doubts they would actually allow him to have one.

_ Worthless, worthless, failure. _

He’s suffocating. The tie around his throat is too tight. The jacket too heavy on his shoulders. His fingers come up, yanking at the fabric as he turns away, tugging at the tie even though it won’t budge because he isn’t doing it properly. Too angry and too sad and too filled with a feeling he doesn’t know the name of just the desire to kick and scream and cry like he’s throwing a tantrum because he can’t even get his tie undone. Just a simple task and he can’t even manage that.

He gives up, hands shaking as he pulls the jacket from his body and tosses it to the ground, leaving it behind in the dirt as he tries to get out of here. Out of this place of death filled with flowers as if the corpses can appreciate a bouquet. It’s a cruel thought and he knows that, but it sticks there in the back of his head. Boiling over again and again. Angry at human customs and angry at himself and angry that he was ever created. Angry that CyberLife did this to him. Put him here only to become useless and too full of emotion to do anything anymore.

He doesn’t want the jacket. He only thinks about going to get it so he can rip it apart along the seams. Undo all the careful stitching that was done before. Rip it to pieces and start all over again. He doesn’t even know why he still has it. Like wearing it would help remind him of his life before, as if it could take him back and start all over again. Step off the elevator in the Phillips’ residence and keep Daniel alive and keep the two Tracis alive and keep Hank alive and--

Maybe somehow, in the end, be a person himself that he wants to keep alive.

He sits down on the side of a curb, hands clawing at the side of his head, knowing his fingers won’t be able to pry the LED from his skull but still trying it anyways. Still wanting to get rid of it no matter the mess it makes. He could leave himself disfigured and ugly trying to claw it out like this and he doesn’t care. He just wants it gone.

“What are you doing?”

Connor freezes, hands falling down slowly as he looks up to meet Detective Reed’s gaze. He thought he was alone. The cemetery was empty. He didn’t see him. His eyes fall from Gavin’s confused expression to his hands, the dirtied coat held tight in his fingertips.

“I--What are  _ you  _ doing?”

“Visiting a friend,” he replies, and his voice sounds a little hoarse, like maybe he’s screamed as much as Connor wants to. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Connor says quickly, standing up. “I was just leaving.”

“Con--” Gavin steps forward, holding the jacket out towards him. He doesn’t move to take it, tries his best not to even look at it again. “Your jacket?”

“I don’t want it.”

“Why?” he asks, his arm resting by his side again, the sleeves hitting the edge of a puddle from the storm a few hours ago. “You decide you want to be human like the rest of us? Take out your LED and pretend you’re like the rest of us?”

“No,” Connor says. “Just pretend I’m not--”

He stops himself.

“Yeah?” Gavin asks, tilting his head. What little humor that was in his features before is gone now. The same hard edge of arrogance and anger that he had in their brief meetings before. “Go on. Pretend you’re not what?”

What does it matter?

The truth or a lie?

He will likely never see Gavin again.

“Me,” he replies. “Pretend I’m not me.”

To pretend that he’s happy, somehow. If he can forget he who is, if he can get rid of every part of him and go somewhere that people don’t know him, maybe he can be something else. He wants to leave here. Whether it’s alive or dead doesn’t matter to him anymore. The only thing that’s kept him is this cemetery. Hank’s body lying in the dirt in Detroit and not Seattle or L.A. or New York.

Gavin goes quiet, looking from Connor’s face to anywhere but. His messed up tie, the wet concrete, the beat-up car on the street beside them passing the pair by. The jacket in his hands, which he moves away from the puddle that has wet the edges of his sleeves.

“I’m not--” he pauses, chewing at his bottom lip. “I’m sorry. That he’s dead.”

“You knew him better than I did.”

“I didn’t get along with him,” Gavin replies. “You did.”

“Not so much me,” Connor says, and his voice feels a little broken. “Programming. Not me.”

“You believe that?”

He nods, even though he knows it’s not the truth. That he was sentient despite his lack of emotions and desires. That he still was the one that made the decisions, even if they didn’t properly fit what CyberLife wanted. Not deviant, but teetering on the edge. He can admit that now. He couldn’t before. Not when Kamski was pushing a gun into his hands and telling him to kill an android in order to stop the revolution.

“So, by that logic, you shouldn’t feel guilty for the things you did when you were a machine or what you were designed for.”

“It wasn’t just things I did as a machine. There are things I did after--”

Picking Markus over Hank. Picking a revolution that is still trying it’s hardest, still fighting and starting to lose, over the person that helped guide him into his life of deviancy in the first place. Letting him die despite the fact he knows there was a way he could’ve saved him and he was too stupid to figure it out. To much of a failure to fix it before it had the chance to break the rest of the way. They could’ve been friends. They could’ve had a relationship outside of the cases and they didn’t.

Connor was too focused on the mission to even get Hank help when he clearly needed it. Drinking so much? Putting his life at risk? Playing Russian roulette? The second he knew about Hank’s alcoholism and suicidal tendencies, he should’ve gotten him help instead of allowing the Lieutenant to remain on these cases. But he was too stupid to even do that. If he had, Hank never would’ve even been in CyberLife Tower. He never would’ve been put in that position. He never would’ve gotten killed.

“We all do fucked up shit, Con, it doesn’t make you irredeemable.”

“Who are you trying to convince here?” Connor asks, suddenly angry, suddenly ready to push him away, fight him, attack him.  _ Hurt  _ him. “Me or you? Are you trying to make yourself feel better--”

“Fuck off. I know what I did. I know who I am.”

That makes one of them. Connor is lost. His only identity manufactured by his creators and even that has been stripped away. No job and no place to live.  _ Worthless.  _

“I’m just saying you don’t need to be ashamed of who you are,” Gavin says. His voice has softened now. Hard edges not quite so sharp anymore. A little less furious but still angry. He doesn’t think Gavin is going to ever be capable of being anything other than pissed off. Maybe he has a right to be. His whole world changed when Connor arrived. Threatening to take away his precious job. He must be so pleased, so happy that Connor was a complete failure in the end. “You know you’re allowed to be happy, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t believe that.

He doesn’t believe he’s allowed anything. He doesn’t deserve anything. Not anymore.

He made his choices. He has to live with them.

“Look, if you want to burn the jacket, burn the fucking jacket. You want to get rid of the LED? I’m not going to stop you. I get it. You think I didn’t destroy stuff attached to old memories? I set off the fire alarm in my apartment when I lit an old photo album on fire. I took a bat to a T.V. it’s just--” Gavin sighs, turning away for a moment. “I know what happened in CyberLife Tower. It wasn’t your fault. I would’ve made the same decision. One person for a thousand. It’s just basic fucking math.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know.”

They stand in silence for a moment. The quiet of the space filled by the ambient noise of the city and the late night. Insects and owls and cars. The distant sound of thunder threatening to bring in another storm.  _ Let it.  _ He likes the rain. It reminds him of his first day of meeting Hank. Even the weather is tied to him. Everything looping back and reminding him of who he was before and how little of a person he is now.

Connor watches Gavin, how he holds the jacket, turning the material over in his hands, thumb moving across the emblems on it. There’s a part of him that wants to rip it from his hands and he doesn’t know why. It just feels strange and wrong to see Gavin holding it.

He turns back to Connor, meeting his gaze and holding it out to him, “You don’t have to keep it. Just don’t… make a decision right now. It never ends well to do something drastic when you’re upset.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Gavin says, with a small shake of his head, an attempt at a comforting smile pulled up on his face. “And that’s okay. Hank’s dead. Nobody expects you to be okay with that. You’re allowed to feel things, Connor.”

But what is he meant to do when all he feels is hopeless or crushed by the weight of grief and guilt? Only ever interspersed by random moments of rage. He wants to shut it all off. Have a few moments of relief. Feel nothing instead of too much all at once. He wonders if Kamski would do that. Erase everything and let him start from scratch again. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel like an intruder in this body or a waste of space in this world.

“Gavin--”

“I’m not a therapist or a psychiatrist, but I’ve been where you are more often than I’d like,” he says, and his voice has finally dropped, last that little bit of annoyance that he’s even here. More genuine than before. A kind tone that seems almost misplaced despite the topic of conversation. “Just don’t give up.”

Don’t stop caring. Don’t stop wanting to be alive. Don’t let himself fall into the trap of being too tired to fight the thoughts that drown him.

Connor knows Gavin’s history in this. Knows he’s tried to kill himself before and didn’t succeed because Tina was there to help him.

As complex as friendship with Hank was, Connor thinks Gavin is number two on his list of messed up relationships he has with humans, but it still means something. This tiny fraction of comfort Gavin is giving him. Showing that he cares, but, of course, only enough that he can still feasibly deny that he was genuinely concerned for him.

But it’s enough.

Enough to make Connor step forward, to pull Gavin close. It’s the first time he’s ever hugged anyone. The most physical contact with another person that wasn’t related to violence or death. The last person he touched was Hank, blood on his hands and watching the life drain from his eyes. This is different. It is an opposite feeling, even if Gavin’s arms are stiff as they close around his body.

“Thank you.”

It’s whispered, quiet enough that Gavin can pretend he didn’t hear it, but Connor knows he does, because the embrace grows a little tighter. He just hopes Gavin knows he means it, even if his words don’t fix anything from one night of talking, it still matters to him. That someone that once tried to kill him is telling him to keep fighting.

It means something.

More than anything, he thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> title based off Blush by Wolf Alice
> 
> ( i am ... very sorry for any mistakes it's very late at night)))


End file.
